1) Selling To Everyone Means You Sell to No One
The best websites offer niche products or services. Unless you are a huge trading
site such as Amazon or Tesco's - then selling to everyone will diminish your
position, relevancy and you will have to compete on price. Know your market and
sell specifically to them.

2) Huge (Un-necessary)Graphics
Remember that you have 8 seconds to get the visitor to engage with the site.
Large graphic files will take up bandwidth, cause the site to be slow, generally
unimpress people and reduce your conversion rate in the process. Optimise the
images to be as small as possible. Only use large images if the site needs it
- e.g. if you are selling aerial photographs!

3) You are Visitor No. '###'
These page counters - visible to the whole world - look awful and instantly tell
visitors that the site is created by a beginner. At the very least they look as if you
are trying to show off and if your site doesn't get many visitors- then you're just
going to look even more silly. Would Google or Ebay show how many people have
visited their site today - with a little counter?

4) To see this Properly, Please Download the following...
Unless you absolutely have to(e.g. if you are an estate agent offering virtual tours
or an online music store) avoid these at all costs. People absolutely hate having to
download a bit of software just to see your site - don't do it.

5) No Obvious Contact Details - or Where to Sign Up
It has been shown time and time again that if people cannot easily find your
contact details, people will leave. These are people that you have ultimately paid
to visit your site, so you are throwing good cash away if you do not give them
what they want.

6) Music/Sound that can't be turned off.
This can be infuriating - especially if people are accessing your site from work!
At the very least, offer a button to click enabling/disabling the sound function.
(If it helps - I made this mistake for years!)

7) Lots of Distracting Adverts & Pop-Ups
Your visitors are at your site to research the information they need to make a
decision about your company. Lots of ads or pop-ups detract from this. Whilst
'Hover-Ads'(Different to pop-ups) can have a serious impact on your conversion
rate - only use them sparingly. Keep ads to a bare minimum.

Having links from other sites to yours will increase your credibility.

So, How do You Get Good Links?

Firstly, most people have already been approached by automated robots asking to simply trade links. At best this is just
rude - at worst, it encourages sloppy linking practices and can be a breach of the spam laws - don't do it.

1) Find out who your target market it and where they go.
2) Go to these places(Websites, newsgroups, forums etc) and get some personal information about the owner
3) Read their website and find some information that you find interesting and that will help your visitors.
4) Compose a (very) personalised email to the site owner.
5) Don't give up - if you don't hear a reply - try again, try harder or try something else.

It's the last few steps that people fall down on - and those same steps where, if you're prepared to go the
extra mile - you will make all the difference and be ahead of your competitors.

The key is not just to simply say "Hello, can we exchange links please" as this has no value whatsoever
and will almost certainly be ignored. You need to explain the benefits of how linking to your site will
be in their interest and of use to their customers.

Naturally, this will only be the case if you have useful, relevant copy on your site and is in no way
competing with them.

Make exchanging links very easy for them. Offer them the HTML code(ask your web designer for this)
So that they can link directly to the exact part of your website that is relevant. Don't be sloppy and just
get links to the home page. Include your telephone number and email address - in case they want to get
in touch.

Don't Give up. People receive hundreds of emails every day. If you have copy on your site that
really could be of use to someone else to link to - try again. Offer a reciprocal link next time.

Getting inbound links is a long process, but well worth the effort. For example, www.mklink.com
has a Page Rank of 5 - pretty good. We get a lot of traffic as a result. There are companies who
offer to do the work for you. Vet them carefully and they could well be a good investment.
Want to know More?
Simply reply to this email, call me on 01454 852414 or visit my site :www.mklink.com